Very pleasant stay at The Palace, this is my second visit to this Hotel within a month and it offers value for money. We paid for an executive room with sea view and could not fault it. Wifi is free ( one hotel I stayed at a couple of weeks ago wanted £15 daily for Wifi !). The food is good. Paignton does not have many decent restaurants so we ate in the hotel and were satisfied. There is entertainment nightly although not our thing.

It did NOT smell of wee but there were plenty of old people, I was one of them ! One thing about old people is that they can enjoy themselves WITHOUT spoiling the enjoyment of others.

We stayed here from 23rd Dec until 28th Dec with my family. Hotel is ok and some of the rooms have been refurbished and are around 3* standard. Hotel is mainly full of old people and the staff are not really on the ball, they also tend to go into a panic when you want something straight away. Everything is very laid back. The hotel is quite old and smells stale, this includes some of the staff that have probably been there as long as the building has been standing.
Service wise this hotel isnt bad, my only gripe is how unclean the room was when we came. Random hairs in the bathroom that were not mine did not bode well.
Id recommend this hotel for short breaks but not for shopping as Torquay is a bit of a hole and unless your into Pound land or low quality goods there isnt much to do.

We felt a bit like we were travelling back in time staying at the Palace. We had a very large room with high ceilings, containing a queen bed (they say they have "king beds" but they are not North American king beds) and a single. There was more than enough room for all our stuff. The furniture and bathroom are quite dated, but everything was very clean and certainly sufficient for our needs. Just not very modern or stylish.
As two mid-forties adults with a 14-year old, we were the youngest family by a long-shot. However, had we been there during English school break, perhaps the mix would have been a bit different.
The breakfast was plentiful - one could eat a combination of a cold buffet (tinned fruits, yoghurt, pastries, cereals) and a hot made-to-order breakfast. However the choices were exactly the same every day. Given it was early July, we wondered at the lack of fresh fruit of any kind.
The hotel is well situated across the road from the beach, and just a short walk from a movie theatre and the main tourist strip of mediocre restaurants, tacky souvenir shops, and casions. The whole area had a slightly run-down, past its prime aura. Again, that may change with an influx of familes and children. But there were lots of services at the beach, including chair rentals.
Were we to go back, I think we might well opt for something in Torquay. We did enjoy a couple of meals at much nicer restaurants in Torquay, and on a rainy day, we enjoyed the small, pleasant acquarium.
The Eden Project was well worth the drive - a good full-day trip.